Our whole family except the younger generation was going to the Ganga Sagar. This holy place is considered to be very peaceful as the swooshing Ganga meets the calm Bay of Bengal sea. The story of this holy place has its mention in Brahma Purana dating back to the 14th Century.
Kapil Muni was meditating on this creek peacefully when 60,000 children of king Sagar of Ikshvaku family came in and unfortunately disturbed his meditation considering him to be the thief of their horse, angry with this he burns them down and sends them to hell. One of their descendent induced Shiva and told him to bring down Ganga to wash of the sins of his ancestors. Listening to his request Shiva and ganga followed his order and ganga with her purity washed away the sins of these 60,000 children of Sagar and thus the name Ganga Sagar came up.
Despite the interesting story we were determined to enjoy shopping in the most chaotic city of India. Early morning the elder members left for Ganga Sagar and we had a long sleep followed by a typical Bengali breakfast of oily Luchi (Deep fried stuffed flat-bread) and over spicy Ghugni (Gram filled curry with onions, masala and lemon on toppings).
After a fulfilling breakfast we headed straight to the Bara bazaar. By the time we reached Bara bazaar we got a call from the other team saying they had reached Ganga Sagar and that we were missing the peaceful serene beach. To compensate we literally shopped in tons as all the goods right from clothes to antiques and decorative items were a perfect bargain.
After nothing more could fit in our hands, we took the yellow blue ambassador taxi and headed towards the famous sweet shop of KC Das. Known to be the inventors of Rossogolla we had to try the original rossogolla of Kolkata. Kolkata in summer at 3:30 in the afternoon is all about sweat and hot winds to infuriate the body.
We needed the sugar-soaked Sandesh and spongy rossogolla to get back our energy. After having two chic-pea Kachori’s shared in four people and about 8 types of Sandesh and 4 rossogollas we finally felt that we had the whole Bengal in our stomach. We called the other who were now boarding the boat to see the exact location where ganga meets Bay of Bengal. They were telling us that beach was so calm that they couldn’t even hear the sound of waves.
After ignoring this and happy with the sweet lunch, we shopped for some more time and then caught a taxi taking us back to hotel. It must have been 5:00pm and in about 15 mins we reached Howrah where we were about spend the next 3hours of our life. I from the front seat could see the distant Howrah bridge completely filled with unmoving cars.
Everyone was by now honking as one of the trams had got stuck right in the crossing and people were now fighting with the tram driver increasing the chaos in the situation. Irritated by all this and predicting this will go on for a while, I closed my eyes.
Now I could just listen to the honking and clearly hear the conversation happening in the car next to us. The sweet berry perfume from that car was also seeking my attention apart from the interesting conversation of how useless is the government. Despite all this chaos the occasional breeze gave my face a cooling effect making me smile at every breeze. After closing my eyes, the traffic really didn’t matter to me as I was at peace listening, smelling and feeling the surroundings.
Meanwhile we got a call that our Ganga sagar team would be late as their boat was hit by another boat and they were now tensed as now the coast guards were yet to rescue them. The basic purpose of getting some peace at Ganga Sagar was ruined just like Kapil Muni’s meditation attempt. But despite being stuck in traffic in the most chaotic city I was at complete peace just by closing my eyes.
That day I realised one thing, meditation and peace are not dependent on any place but can be found right inside us just by closing our eyes.
“Chasing after the world brings chaos, letting it bring to me brings peace.”
-Zen Gatha.
Contact Author–
Abhishek Purohit
wanderfulltales@gmail.com
Click on the icons
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Wander-Full-Tales 
Nicely written 😊
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
LikeLike
Thank you so much.
LikeLike